Behind the Scenes

n The Air! "You're listening to The Succubus Club on KLBC, your truely underground radio station!" Those are the immortal opening words you hear being broadcast over the Internet every Wednesday night by "Kitty & Candy". During the weekend of the annual Buffy Posting Board Party in Los Angeles, CoA was able to spend time with the charismatic ladies of The Succubus Club, a popular Internet radio show that critically analyzes the work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Renowned among both fans and VIPs, The Succubus Club airs 2-hours weekly to chat about every aspect of the shows, including in-depth storyline discussion, character development, and sometimes simply whether it 'sucked' or not. With their meticulous attention to detail, professional analytical skills, and constant humor, The Succubus Club has become an indispensable resource for Buffy and Angel fans. Over the course of the three days I tagged along with them, they gave me detailed insight into one of the most unique and entertaining radio programs on the air as we explored their backgrounds, their experience during the PBP, and the origins of the 'pie' fetish.

In the Beginning

Janice Pope and Candy Simkins are better known amongst their fans as Kitty and Candy and they are as natural on the microphone as any radio talk show hosts you might listen to. It is surprising to learn that The Succubus Club is a product of love and not the professional careers for these two dynamic women. Candy, the owner of a printer cartridge company, explained her found passion for radio, "I went to Cal State Long Beach in 1997 as a Film/Radio/Television major (I have a minor in marketing), I wanted to stay in school an extra year so I tacked on a minor. I was intending to go into film and television but I had to do radio in order to get some credits. It was really non-intentional for me to get into radio. Once I did, I fell in love with it, and the rest is history as they say. I've been there ever since." However, Janice (Kitty), a Long Beach high school English teacher, stumbled across radio in a rather opposite way, "It was totally different for me because I had already graduated with a Journalism degree and I decided to go back to school and get my teaching credentials.

"When I went back to school I thought to myself, 'Well I'm here, so I might as well make the most of my returning education.' I found a flyer that said: Join KBeach to be a DJ (which was our original radio station we worked at), and I've always wanted to do that." Kitty, blessed with a naturally deep, radio friendly voice, remarks on her unique vocal gift, "I definitely don't smoke and I don't drink very much, but I do talk a lot because I'm a teacher, so my voice has probably deepened over the years from losing it so many times. Ever since I was a kid I've always had a deep voice, even when I was in junior high. I remember one of my shop teachers always saying to me, probably inappropriately, 'You have a very deep, sexy voice', OK I'm like 13!" she remembers, laughing. "I've always wanted to do something with it because I like it. It's fun." While they appear to be friends since childhood, Janice and Candy only met each other through the KBeach radio show. "I saw the flyer and I called it up to be a DJ on this new radio station that they're going to have for the students. Actually Candy was the first person I spoke to but I didn't know anything was going to come from that, and that's how it started." Janice said.

"Faith is sooo Hot!" Sorry Kitty, that's not the Bonus Question

"She was the person I had to be in contact with," she continued. "I was all scared and nervous and she was all cool. I went up to her like, 'Uh, Candy uh, can you help me do my demo tape?' She helped me do my demo tape and that's when we started talking about Buffy, and that's when we got into this."

Both avid fans of Buffy and Angel, the main subject matter of the show, Kitty and Candy discovered the shows in very different ways. Kitty recounts how her love for Buffy has very deep roots. "I've watched Buffy since day one, episode one and I haven't stopped," she explained proudly. A fan of the orginial 1992 film, she was very anxious for the television series to air, "I couldn't wait. I was a big fan of the movie and I love camp. I love campy horror. I would drive to my horrible job up in L.A. and there used to be a big billboard that said: "Coming Soon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and I was like, 'I can't wait!' That was the only cool thing about my drive. I just couldn't wait for it." Candy, not a true fan of the series until its second season, found her love for the show in a very unique way. "I actually knew that it was on, but didn't follow it," she admitted. "During the summer after the first season aired, the summer of 97, I was living with my father. I would go out to the living room to talk with him and he'd be watching [Buffy]. I'd say, 'Dad I have to talk to you', and he'd say, 'Well wait till the commercial.' So I'd sit there and watch for a few minutes until the commercial, and I was entertained. So I caught on the summer after season one and I caught all the repeats, after that I've watched every episode." She even recalls the very first episode to spark her interest, "I remember watching "The Witch", episode 3 of the first season and thinking how cool it was at the end, where they discovered that it was the mother and the daughter switching bodies. I was like, 'That is the coolest twist ever.' I thought it was so smart, and I fell in love with it right after that." Their mutual interest in the show evolved to become the main subject matter of The Succubus Club's detailed, analytical discussions, and offered the fan-base another resource to discuss the work.

The Succubus Club has been on the air since 1999 and has evolved quite a bit over the years, most notably in the radio station change. Kitty was kind enough to narrate The Succubus Clubs history from its conception. "We started over at Cal State Long Beach at KBeach radio. We were the founders. It was basically Candy and Mike Soultanian, who we called GM Mike, and a few other people, then I came on board; we were sort of the core people that ran the station. It was a new thing, Internet radio for the students, we had a really good time, but there were a lot of problems. Issues came up with the student union, politics, and bureaucracy," she said. "But we dealt with it because once we started doing The Succubus club, GM Mike was so into it. He was like, 'This is so great, you gotta do it.'

"I know for a fact the people at home are having fun while they listen to it so that makes [Kitty Torture] my favorite time of the show too." ~ Candy

We loved doing the show so we put the politics behind us. But after a while, I hate to say they didn't appreciate us, that sounds so snotty, but it's true. They did not appreciate what we brought to the station, and when it came time to shift people around, they were all too willing to let us go. They were like, 'If you want to stay you can, but we're going to make it really hard for you.' We didn't know what to do, because either we stay and be miserable, or we leave but we don't do the show.

"We were seriously considering stopping The Succubus Club because we didn't want to be at KBeach anymore," Kitty explains. "And then Mike, who started to do some stuff at Long Beach City, said, 'Why don't you come over and meet Ken Borgers, and the people there because they would really like you to bring your show here.' We were all shocked," Kitty confessed, "we met them, and we love it here so much. KLBC has been nothing but cool to us, totally accommodating. They made sure we had our same time slot, our same day, and we got our producer Ethan Hackett. Ethan we love to death and don't know what we would do without him."

Ethan easily returned the compliment, "We like having them here. I've been here for three years already, because I have no direction in life, so I stick with radio," he jokes. "We heard that they were coming up, but we have legal things where you can't have people that aren't attending classes on campus do a show unless they have someone in with them that's involved with a radio program. We originally had our former general manager scheduled to be their producer, she had other stuff going on with work outside of here, and I volunteered not knowing anything about Buffy." All punnung aside he admits, "I just got sucked into it. It's been a fun time." Not long after working with Kitty and Candy, Ethan too became a die-hard fan of Buffy and Angel, "I do [watch them] religiously. I dragged all my friends down with me." Kitty continues to explain the positive atmosphere of their current location, "We've had nothing but positive experiences here. We just love KLBC. They wanted us and they made it so we'd want to be here. They do all kinds of stuff for us. We're so much happier where we are now."

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